Chapter 27 — The Woman He Cannot Blame
Saskia’s proposal arrived through counsel and requested a joint defence meeting.
Kit’s solicitor advised declining. Their interests had separated the moment the investigation recovered her deleted source folder and his access approval.
Anything Saskia said now might be an attempt to place knowledge on him; anything Kit said might help the company place the registration solely on her.
“What does she want?” Kit asked.
“A common factual position. She acted within executive authority; you didn’t know the internal filing used her name as author.”
“The second part is true.”
“The first is broad enough to consume everything else.”
Kit agreed to one meeting with both legal teams and the independent investigator present.
They met in a hired conference suite. Saskia entered wearing a dark green suit and no visible Harcourt clothing. Since losing building access, she had given one interview describing herself as a creative director caught inside defective corporate governance. She didn’t mention deleting files.
Her solicitor began. “Ms Reed is prepared to provide a complete account of source handling, including material not yet recovered, if Mr Harcourt confirms publicly that she acted under his direction and had no reason to doubt company ownership.”
The investigator said, “Evidence is not a bargaining asset. Your client has continuing disclosure obligations.”
“We are discussing cooperation beyond strict obligations.”
Saskia looked at Kit. “You know what the culture was. Legal told us ownership would be fixed. Tom told us credits had to match the campaign hierarchy. You gave me the archive.”
“I did.”
Her surprise showed. She had expected resistance before agreement.
“Then say it plainly,” she said. “I didn’t break into a private room. Your approval removed the restriction.”
“That is already in my public statement.”
“You left people to infer I deceived you.”
“You told the press Orchard Ashes came from your family memory.”
“Because the collection narrative was inheritance.”
“Whose family?”
Saskia’s mouth tightened. “The audience doesn’t separate autobiography from brand story.”
The investigator made a note.
Saskia’s solicitor intervened. “The issue is whether Ms Reed believed Harcourt it didn’t require false attribution; Saskia’s decisions remained under investigation; his own responsibility didn’t depend on hers.
The paper wanted him to say whether he had been personally involved with Saskia. He declined to turn the rumour into a distraction from Ottilie’s work and repeated that no affair had occurred. He didn’t call Ottilie to make sure she saw the answer.
At his first week in the hotel role, a property manager moved a boiler repair ahead of two approved projects because forty rooms had lost hot water. Kit agreed with the priority and disliked the unauthorised spend. He documented the emergency, asked Imogen to ratify it and left the manager in post.
The next day, he learnt the repair company belonged to the manager’s brother.
The old reflex produced dismissal before inquiry.
Kit referred the conflict to compliance and provided the facts.
The contract price proved below market; the undisclosed relationship still breached policy.
Imogen issued a warning and rewrote the emergency supplier rule.
Kit had reached the correct problem and didn’t own the response.
The work offered no audience connected to Ottilie. That made it a better place to find out whether restraint survived when nobody he loved was watching.
The final account would contain no single innocent institution and no single woman available to carry all its guilt.
The investigator’s report circulated under embargo before settlement.
It attributed the access approval to Kit, the registration and deletion to Saskia, the narrowed campaign hierarchy to Tom and Kit, and the repeated loss of maker credits to systems maintained across several departments.
No paragraph concluded that culture acted without people.
Saskia challenged two findings. She said the source-story interview had been improvised by a journalist and that she answered under pressure.
Raw footage showed her pausing before describing an orchard her family never owned.
Tom stood beyond the camera. Kit had watched from the monitor and told communications to preserve the answer because buyers responded to personal heritage.
He added that instruction to his response.
The report also found that Saskia produced original work elsewhere in the collection.
Ottilie had never claimed otherwise. Kit insisted the schedule distinguish those designs from the registered Vane sources.
Accuracy didn’t require stripping Saskia of everything she had made in order to establish what she had taken.
Tom resigned before disciplinary findings. Saskia’s employment ended through settlement. Kit neither recommended criminal referral nor opposed any authority reviewing the evidence. Those decisions belonged to investigators and the wronged creator, not to his need for a villain.
At the hotel, Imogen asked why an online article called him Saskia’s former lover.
“No affair occurred,” Kit said. “The company encouraged an implication of closeness for commercial reasons, and I allowed it.”
Imogen nodded. “Then staff communications will say personal rumours are irrelevant. Your conduct findings are not.”
The distinction gave him neither protection nor punishment beyond the facts.
Kit corrected one factual date and accepted the rest. His lawyer asked whether he wanted to challenge the phrase deliberate public ambiguity. He had never intended the audience to believe he slept with Saskia; he had intended them to perceive creative intimacy and command.
“Leave it,” he said.
The ambiguity had been deliberate even if the precise rumour was not.
When the report became public, Kit’s mother called Saskia predatory in an interview conducted outside Bell House. Kit issued one factual correction: Saskia bore responsibility for identified acts; the report didn’t find she coerced him, and his decisions remained his.
His mother called the correction disloyal. Kit refused a second interview. Defending the allocation of responsibility didn’t require rehabilitating Saskia or inviting her back into his life.
Ottilie’s solicitor acknowledged receipt of the report through counsel. No private response came. Kit returned to a hotel staffing rota that contained no place for either woman’s gratitude.